owever,
so many difficulties occurred, that we were fain to circumscribe our
original intention; and, instead of eight houses, content ourselves with
four. And even these, from the badness of the timber, the scarcity of
artificers, and other impediments, are, at the day on which I write, so
little advanced, that it will be well, if at the close of the year 1788,
we shall be established in them. In the meanwhile the married people,
by proceeding on a more contracted scale, were soon under comfortable
shelter. Nor were the convicts forgotten; and as leisure was frequently
afforded them for the purpose, little edifices quickly multiplied on the
ground allotted them to build upon.

But as these habitations were intended by Governor Phillip to answer
only the exigency of the moment, the plan of the town was drawn, and the
ground on which it is hereafter to stand surveyed, and marked out.
To proceed on a narrow, confined scale, in a country of the extensive
limits we possess, would be unpardonable: extent of empire demands
grandeur of design. That this has been our view will be readily
believed, when I tell the reader, that the principal street in our
projected city will be, when completed, agreeable to the plan laid
down, two hundred feet in breadth, and all the rest of a corresponding
proportion. How far this will be accompanied with adequate dispatch, is
another question, as the incredulous among us are sometimes hardy enough
to declare, that ten times our strength would not be able to finish it
in as many years.

Invariably intent on exploring a country, from which curiosity promises
so many gratifications, his Excellency about this time undertook an
expedition into the interior parts of the continent. His party consisted
of eleven persons, who, after being conveyed by water to the head of
the harbour, proceeded in a westerly direction, to reach a chain of
mountains, which in clear weather are discernible, though at an immense
distance, from some heights near our encampment. With unwearied industry
they continued to penetrate the country for four days; but at the end of
that time, finding the base of the mountain to be yet at the distance
of more than twenty miles, and provisions growing scarce, it was judged
prudent to return, without having accomplished the end for which the
expedition had been undertaken. To reward their toils, our adventurers
had, however, the pleasure of discovering and traversing an extensive
trac